Review supported and unsupported upgrade paths (SharePoint Foundation 2010)

Applies to: SharePoint Foundation 2010

When you plan your upgrade process, make sure that you verify that the upgrade path you want to pursue is supported. This article describes supported and unsupported upgrade paths for an in-place upgrade, and covers which specific topologies can be upgraded in place to Microsoft SharePoint Foundation 2010.

Review supported topologies for upgrade

When you upgrade, you must upgrade to the same kind of installation: stand-alone to stand-alone, or server farm to server farm. You cannot migrate from stand-alone to farm or vice versa during an in-place upgrade process. However, either before or after you upgrade, you can change the size and scale of a server farm to suit your requirements. Or, if you perform a database attach upgrade, you can attach the databases to a different installation type.

Physical topology guidance

The Microsoft SQL Server topology — in addition to your network, physical storage, and caching — can significantly affect system performance. In planning your hardware, remember that for in-place upgrade, the server or server farm that you upgrade must be running a 64-bit version of Windows Server 2008 R2 or Windows Server 2008 with Service Pack 2 (SP2). For server farms, you must also be running a 64-bit version of Microsoft SQL Server 2008 R2, SQL Server 2008 with Service Pack 1 (SP1) and Cumulative Update 2, or SQL Server 2005 with SP3 and Cumulative Update 3. For more information about upgrade requirements, see Review system requirements for upgrade (SharePoint Foundation 2010).

Supported topologies

The following table lists the supported starting topologies in Windows SharePoint Services 3.0, and the supported and unsupported ending topologies when you upgrade in place to SharePoint Foundation 2010.

Migrating from a stand-alone server to a server farm

If you want to change from a stand-alone server to a server farm, you can do so before you upgrade. To migrate from a stand-alone server to a server farm configuration, you must first create a new farm, and then move the databases from the stand-alone server to the server farm. For more information, see Migrate content databases from Windows Internal Database to an instance of SQL Server (Windows SharePoint Services 3.0). After you have migrated, you can perform your upgrade to SharePoint Foundation 2010.

Migrating from 32-bit hardware

You cannot upgrade in-place from Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 to SharePoint Foundation 2010 if you are on 32-bit hardware. If you start in 32-bit, you must first migrate to 64-bit hardware. For more information, see Migrate an existing server farm to a 64-bit environment (Windows SharePoint Services 3.0).

See Also

Other Resources

Downloadable book: Upgrading to SharePoint Foundation 2010
Resource Center: Upgrade and Migration for SharePoint Foundation 2010